Originally released in 2005, the console sold over 84 million consoles until on 20 April 2016, where Microsoft announced they will no longer be producing any new hardware, although they will continue to support the platform.[1]

Contents

Kinect

Kinect is a motion sensor camera created by Microsoft for the Xbox 360 and was released in late 2010. Kinect was released to compete with the Wii Remote's motion controls and the PlayStation Move for the PlayStation 3. Sonic Free Riders was released exclusively for the Kinect and so far it is the only Sonic game to use full functionality of the Kinect. The Kinect for the Xbox 360 is currently incompatible with the Xbox One.

Xbox Live

The Xbox 360 also has its integrated Xbox Live, an online service created and operated by Microsoft. Xbox Live allows for online multiplayer gaming and digital media delivery, including connectivity with the Xbox Games Store, an online digital distribution network. Here, in the Games Store, players can purchase and download Xbox 360 games and demos, downloadable content and Xbox Live Arcade (XBLA) digital-only games which offers ports of classic games and original titles.

Xbox Live is available as a free and a paid-subscription service (known as Xbox Live Free and Xbox Live Gold respectively) where most features such as online multiplayer gaming are restricted to the Gold service.

Characters introduced

Backward compatibility

All Xbox 360 models have backwards compatibility with selected Xbox games via software emulation. Amongst the games in the list, all Sonic games released for the Xbox (Sonic Heroes, Sonic Mega Collection Plus,Shadow the Hedgehog and Sonic Riders) will work when the game disc is inserted into the Xbox 360 console. A hard disk drive is required to save any Xbox games' progress. All of the Xbox Sonic games versions do not have a widescreen display setting (despite that the orignal Xbox supports this setting with all of its Sonic games) and each game has some additional emulation issues and glitches listed below:[8]

Sonic Heroes:

The PAL version of the game will not work if the display refresh rate is set to 50 Hz.

In-game, the text is not sharp and has some graphical errors on it (lines under or through letters).

The stage title screens have lines through them.

All CGI cutscenes play at around 15 frames per second but is in sync with the audio. In the opening movie however, the "Sonic Heroes" song has to repeat sections in order to stay in sync.

In gameplay, any displayed button prompts are not sharp.

In gameplay, the player can press either or to activate Team Blast, despite the Black Button which is mapped to did not have a function in the original version of the game.

On the title screen, the logo has notable aliasing issues.

In the credits, the cutscenes shown actually play without the subtitles while it is meant to be muted on the original Xbox version.

Sonic Mega Collection Plus: Sound glitches in PAL version when playing Sonic the Hedgehog, may occur in other games.

Shadow the Hedgehog:

Intro and CGI cutscenes will lag after starting.

Some sound effects are muffled.

Small frame rate issues happen when large amounts of gunfire and enemies are on-screen. Freezes occasionally during cutscenes and gameplay.

Sonic Riders:

Cinematic cutscenes have grey cylinder guides under the characters.

The Metal City track has loading problems as the player can see the stage progress as it loads.

Trivia

In Holiday 2008, Sega Superstars Tennis (along with Xbox Live Arcade Compilation Disc which came with all Xbox 360 Arcade systems until late 2009) was bundled with Xbox 360 Arcade systems.

Of all the characters introduced on this video game console, the only two that has managed to get to another game are Silver the Hedgehog and Orbot.

Only two Sonic games were released exclusively for the Xbox 360, those being Sonic Free Riders and Dreamcast Collection (with the latter being a console-exclusive release). The remaining games were also released for the PlayStation 3.